Although I can remember the how and when of me getting into Rollins Band (buying the Liar/Disconnect single on a sunny day in London in 1994), I struggle to remember why. Probably something I'd read somewhere - 1994 was around the time that Rollins was closest to whatever the alternative equivalent of mainstream is. There must be a proper name for it; "almost-but-not-quite-totally-obscure" doesn't trip off the tongue so easily. Whilst Rollins generally referred to himself as being one tenth of Rollins Band, there's no arguing with the fact that it is his throaty bellows and insuppressible rage that strings together the Rollins Band back catalogue. Starting out as a clear progression from the unhinged alt punk of latter day Black Flag, they went on to to play progressively darker and heavier blues-tinged rock, occasionally veering off into doomy Swans-esque avant garde territory. The arrival of Melvin Gibbs on bass brought in a few jazz-funk themes, before an all new band took on a more straight forward rock direction. And throughout it all, the intensity and disgust of Rollins is the constant that makes it a cohesive whole. Also, it couldn't really be Rollins Band without Rollins. That wouldn't make sense.
Since I live in Bristol, it's almost compulsory for me to like Portishead. So it's a good job they're pretty fucking great, really. To my ears, their albums tell the story of a post break-up spiral descent into insanity. The first record, Dummy, is all "nobody loves me" depressive introspection. By the second eponymous record things have taken an altogether more sinister turn, and the vibe has switched from "I'm going to kill myself" to "I'm going to kill myself, but I'm taking all you fuckers with me". Then there's a long period of uneasy silence... and then Third, by which point we're listening to Portishead sat in the corner of a darkened room, gently rocking back and forth and singing to the severed head in it's hands. Somewhere in the middle of all this is the very excellent Roseland NYC live album. It's one of those records where the band plays their hits with full orchestra backing; and usually you get the impression that the band in question is determined to get their moneys worth and it's all orchestra all the time, but Portishead have way more class than that. For some songs the orchestra hardly does a thing, because it wouldn't sound right; whilst on others, the additional arrangements conspire to an even greater sense of forboding menace. Or sound more like Bond themes. Whatever, it's all good.
Lords were a complete unknown to me until three and half years ago, when I happened to catch them at the All Tomorrows Parties: The Fans Strike Back festival. The idea behind the festival was that ticket holders were entitled to cast votes for which bands they would most like to see. At the end of each week the votes got counted up and the festival organisers would go and harass the top ten bands. Some wiley individuals realised that if they got organised and were tactical with their voting, they could pretty much guarantee getting a few of their favourites onto the list. As a consequence the festival was populated by a number of mediocre alt-wank bands that the generation Y kids with their achingly fashionable haircuts and ironic cardigans got very excited about. However, since this is also most likely how Lords got in on the act too, it's kind of hard to get too angry at them (apart from the one very tall generation Y kid with hair that was not only achingly fashionable but also the size of Neptune, who chose to stand directly in front of me as soon as they started playing). Then again, there's nothing even remotely cool-indie-tosser about Lords; so maybe the hip kids had nothing to do with it, and I do hate every single one of them after all. Lords play - or maybe that should be played, it's not entirely clear if they're still doing this thing - the kind of scuzzy life-affirming dancin' blues that makes you want to dance and shout and punch the back of the head of the lanky cool bastard with the big hair that's standing in front of you. If there was a band called The Black Eagles Of Death Zeppelin, they would sound like this.
I don't know about you, but I would have certain expectations of a band with a name like Prolapse. These expectations would not include CD liner notes that consist largely of "Jane's" style aircraft illustrations. And yet this is exactly what I found many years ago when my weekly rummage through the racks of Ben's Collectors Records unearthed a copy of Ghosts Of Dead Aeroplanes. I stared intently at it for a few minutes, before eventually deciding that £3 was a small price to pay to satisfy my curiosity. And a good thing too, as it turned out to be a blinder. The justaposition of brutal arsequake band name and obtuse indie illustrations is, to some extent, mirrored in the record itself. There's no bowel-shattering sludge on display; but there is a bizarre clash of angular guitar clanging and dreamy shoegaze, and contrasting vocal styles with gentle girly warblings vying for supremacy with the coarse and deranged ramblings of a Scottish madman. Somehow, it all works. Personally, I reckon Ghosts Of Dead Aeroplanes is very much the standout record in the Prolapse discography. Which is not say that the other records are bad particularly - The Italian Flag certainly has a few moments - but if I could only own one Prolapse record, it would definitely be Ghosts. And if I could own another, it would probably be a spare copy of Ghosts, just in case.
Much like Godflesh last week, The Jesus Lizard were one of those bands that for a long time I had heard of but never actually heard. I remember that they put out a split single with Nirvana that I completely failed to buy at the time; and that frontman David Yow was arrested for indecent exposure at some festival or other after playing a game of "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" with Courtney Love of Hole. And that was about the sum total of my knowledge until an afternoon of digging around in my local second hand record den revealed a Jesus Lizard rich seam. Not that it was an especially enlightening experience at the time. Mostly I came to the conclusion that it was all a barely listenable racket. And whilst I diligently gave the records another try every now and then, I still didn't really get it until I saw them play live at one of the ATP festivals a few years back. And with Yow crawling over the crowd towards me, malicious intent written in sweat across his writhing features as he howled "I can't swim, I CAN'T SWIM", I realised with horror that the jarring, angular, smashed melodies of the music had spun a paralysing hex on me and I was sure to die. And in that moment, I got it. You won't like them.
For a big chunk of the 90s Godflesh was one of those bands that I knew I was supposed to like, but it took me ages to get around to sticking any of it in my ear. This probably worked out best for me, as I reckon I prefer the later records; the relentless industrial dirge is still very much relentless, industrial and dirge-y, but with a bit more variety and texture. Godflesh disintegrated around the early 2000's, and frontman Broadrick (once in Napalm Death) went on to form Jesu. Cut from the same drum-machines-and-vast-slabs-of-distorted-guitar cloth as his former outfit, Jesu is generally a bit more uplifting - occasionally overlapping with some of the more doomy shoegaze bits of Godflesh. Doomgaze? I dunno. Well worth checking out though. But I'm a gloomy bastard at heart; and since Godflesh reformed for a few shows a couple of years ago and maybe are perhaps writing some new material possibly, I'll take a fat slice of caustic mechanical trudging this week please.
I felt certain that I'd strung together some shit words about this funny looking bastard already. Never mind, now's as good a time as any. Except that I really don't have much to say about this weird fractured drum 'n' bass 'n' ambience 'n' contempt, other than I like the contrasting mix of fractured drum 'n' bass, ambience and contempt. I like that everything by Aphex Twin sounds like Aphex Twin without being formulaic or predictable. I like that Mr Aphex Twin (Richard D James) is either a funny looking bastard possessed of sublime musical genius that transcends all mortal comprehension; or a funny looking bastard possessed of that special kind of genius that compels people to handcraft aluminium foil headwear, shout at clouds and collect toenail clippings. And I like Chris Cunningham's disturbing video accompaniments. Get startled, yeah?
Having temporarily relocated to the other side of the world, leaving all my precious CDs far behind me, I've been experiencing sinister foreign radio stations as I've pootled about in a variety of terrible cars with no ipod connectivity. This has brought me to the same conclusion I reached many years ago in my homeland; radio is what you listen to when you don't really like music enough to care what you listen to. I do like music enough to care what I listen to, even if it might occasionally seem to the casual observer to be an earful of foetid shit. So I've spent the past few weeks burning shiny round mixtapes on my laptop, trying to put together some (relatively) coherent playlists. In doing so I have discovered that a) I can put together some pretty fine easy listening compilations, b) I don't own nearly enough jazz funk, and c) there are certain bands that I struggle with when it comes to making shiny round mixtapes. Charger are one such band. The problem I have is that when I try to pick the best Charger songs to put onto the shiny round mixtape, I eventually come to the conclusion that the best Charger song is ALL OF THE CHARGER SONGS. The extent to which they clearly don't give a single fuck about anything is evident both in the violently uncaring sludgtality of their vaguely musical output, and also in the way in which they have deftly avoided any sort of tangible success or recognition in the ten years or so that they have been retching up their completely inhuman racket. They are the perfect antidote to the sort of musical apathy that makes commercial radio a viable proposition; because no matter how little you like music, Charger like you even less. Fuzzbastards. Website: http://www.fuzzbastards.com/ Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/charger Facebook: nope Wikipedia: nope
I realised the other day that the band I have seen most this year is (I think) Jesse Ventura who, with hits like Dick Sledge and... erm... many more, spaff out a foaming jet of Gay For Johnny Depp-esque homoerotic hardcore. What's this got to do with Mea Culpa? Almost nothing - the only (tenuous) link is that the two bands share a singer. Where Jesse Ventura are a bunch of hip grinding sexual tyrannosaurs, Mea Culpa are a darker, more serious and introspective prospect. Bleak, desparate, etc etc. So if Mea Culpa are such a miserable bunch of bastards, why aren't Jesse Ventura the greatest band in the world ever this week? Partly because they don't have any recorded output that I can try and trick you into listening to (although at the time of writing they're working on that). Partly because I like miserable bastards better than sexual deviants (most of the time). But mostly because I think that while Jesse Ventura are a fantastic live band, its the dismal and discomforting post-whatever of Mea Culpa that I want to listen to at home. Of course, that might all change once Jesse Ventura get around to releasing something - so check them out too (https://www.facebook.com/JESSEVENTURABAND). Get startled. __Prostitutes In Picture FramesProstitutes in Picture Frames Three and a Half Times Three and a Half Times
Until I started looking into it (about 20 minutes ago), I was convinced that at the time Mahumodo were about (2000ish) they were just one of many quite British post-metal bands; all following in the vast soaringly epic/crushingly heavy wake of Deftones, Cult of Luna and Neurosis. But it turns out that the glut of British bands all doing more or less the same thing came along at around the time that Mahumodo were calling it a day. Which I guess makes them trendsetters of sorts; barring the fact that they sound like bits of the aforementioned bands themselves, and were never particularly trendy. After they went kaput the assorted remnants of Mahumodo went on to form *Shels and Devil Sold His Soul; well-regarded bands that I'm sure are just lovely, but they never clicked with me. Fuck off and get yourself a copy of the Waves EP instead. Website: nope Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/officialmahumodo Facebook: not really Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahumodo
To be honest I haven't been listening to an awful lot of anything this week, for reasons mostly relating to travel through time and space. But back when I was all about Animals As Leaders, I also went through a brief (basically an afternoon) but intense Intronaut phase. They kind of tick the same boxes as Animals As Leaders - fiddly guitar lines, proggy rambling song structures, occasional crazed jazz freakouts - but tend more towards the shouty end of the scale. It's like a jazz funk bassist was being held against his will by a brutal metal band who refused to release him until his thumbs fell off. Admittedly, it's not very much like that; but I'm not that great at creative writing, so that's what your stuck with. Fuckers. Now go and listen to some Intronaut. Website: http://blogronaut.blogspot.co.nz/ Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/intronaut Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Intronaut Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intronaut
I met Animals As Leaders frontchap Tosin Abasi a few years ago, when he was manning the merch stand at a gig in Aldershot's glamorous West End Centre - the knackered urinal of the UK toilet circuit. At the time Tosin was playing lead guitar for the very fine but short lived metalcore outfit Reflux, playing support for the very fine but short lived metal outfit Eden Maine. I mainly remember it for the weird stand-off we shared, where I was pretty sure but not certain that he was the guitarist for Reflux, and he seemed pretty sure that I might know he was the guitarist for Reflux but wasn't certain that I knew that. According to the great bastion of truth and enlightenment that is Wikipedia, it would have been around this time that his band's record label approached him with the idea of a solo record - an idea that he dismissed at the time as "egotistical and unnecessary". Fast forward to earlier this year; Reflux went kaput some years ago, Tosin has taken up his label's offer and released two albums under the moniker Animals As Leaders, and I am in the crowd to see them play support to the mighty Meshuggah. I mainly remember this gig for the three stitches I needed in my eyebrow after colliding violently with some other chap in the pit; but also for the Animals As Leaders set, which was one of the finest displays of virtuoso fretboard wankery I have seen since... well, since Reflux played the West End Centre in Aldershot. Its taken me until a few weeks ago to get around to picking up anything by them; but now that I have (their self-titled debut), I'll be damned if I can stop listening to it. It's a little self indulgent in places, sure; but the twiddlyness never detracts from the overall groove of the record. As such it manages to be one of those most rare things; a guitar-based instrumental record with some fucking soul. Seriously, these guys are the best 8-string progressive jazz metal band you'll ever hear. And I appreciate that it's not an especially crowded genre, but you should check them out anyway. Website: http://prostheticrecords.com/?p=499 Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/animalsasleaders Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/animalsasleaders Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animals_as_Leaders
Yet another dance act I got into thanks to Wipeout 2097. See also Underworld, Orbital, Photek, and many more. Presumably they got that gig thanks to the pounding pounding industrial techno of first record Accelerator; but by the time the game was released, FSOL were full into their crazed experimental ambient soundscapery. It's all either brilliantly visionary, or desperately pretentious. Probably both. Either way, 90's techno seems to be floating my boat this week; and I have been shoving a lot of it into my ears. I strongly recommend you do the same.
About a million years ago, in 1997, I was wasting my lunch break trawling through the forgotten rubbish in the second hand record shop a few doors up from the shop I worked in. That's when I stumbled across Jitterjuice - the debut record by these guys. I'd never heard of it, or them, before; but the CD case was a fruity shade of neon yellow, and it only cost £3. Sold. As luck would have it, it was a pretty great record; a bit turgid towards the end, but mostly a bewildering mix of raucous guitars, dark electronica and a thick smear of weirdness. Somewhere between the Pixies and Lamb. Nice. I never made any effort to keep up with all things 12 Rounds related, happy just to play my splendid bargain happenchance over and over and over again. Turns out that they released a second record at some point, and recorded a third. Though the record itself was never released, the band are making some of the songs available for free download through their website. It's a little more polished than that first record, but still well worth checking out.
I've been listening to these guys a lot this week, for no readily discernible reason. But that's fine, because I don't have to explain myself to you or your foul internets. They were a mighty powerful band. I got to see them just the once, on what transpired to be their farewell tour some five years ago; and it was astonishing to witness the frantic technicality of their records performed live with such precision. Probably. It was a while back, and I got a few good knocks on the head. It was awesome. Probably. A great many bands are described (by me, mostly) as sounding "schizophrenic", and Sikth would be no exception. But in their case it really does ring true; partly because of the breakneck switches in style and crazed time signatures, but mainly because of the dual vocals that sound like warring aspects of a fractured personality. Mental.
Lots of my other favourite bands have covered a variety of Joy Division songs at some point or another. Come to think of it, it took a surprisingly long time for me to hear a Joy Division song that was actually performed by Joy Division. I think their bleak miserabalist post punk indie racket has aged quite well. Probably explains why I'm listening to so much of it right now.
Saw these guys play the Fleece last week. Which turned out to be quite good timing, as the very next day they managed to drive their tour bus off a 30ft viaduct in the next town over. So we can say with some confidence that they play music better than they park. What else do we know about Baroness? They are from Savannah, Georgia. Frontman John Baizley also produces some very fine artwork, and has something of the ghost pirate aspect about him - in a certain light his head appears to be a skull with a beard. Which is cool. They play awesome metal which frequently spirals off on proggy tangents, without ever seeming like moronic headbangers or tedious beardstrokers. And they like that twin guitar thing that Thin Lizzy and Mastodon seem to like so much. Baroness are the greatest band in the world ever. Also the most hospitalised band in the world. Get well soon chaps. Thanks for the mindblowing gig, and sorry our fine weather, road networks and local geography all conspired to try and kill you.
In an old episode of Futurama, Bender confesses to Beck "I always dreamed of being a musician-poet who transcends genres even as he reinvents them, just like you." Bang on. But that makes the musician-poet's inclusion here a wee bit tricksy. Which Beck are we talking about? The lo-fi grunge country fuck-up from Mellow Gold? Maybe the channelling-the-spirit-of-Prince funk goblin from Midnite Vultures? Or perhaps the trash-hop noise-pop freakazoid from Odelay? Mostly, it's none of the above. Despite the recent rediscovery of a SNES sending me back to a time of swearing at tiny TVs, not revising for GCSE exams and listening to Mellow Gold on a permanent loop, it's the more recent Sea Change that has burrowed into my brain. Delicate, haunting isolation forms the backdrop for swelling strings, lilting country twangs and Beck's lonesome grumbling.
And Whiskeyclone, Hotel City 1997. That song rules.
As far as I can tell, grime is the delightfully Anglicised equivalent of US gangsta rap. It's all the product of urban decay, a life on the mean streets of wherever and doing whatever it takes to get by; but whilst exponents of the latter recount tales of drive-by shootings, carjacking and busting caps into domes, practitioners of the former tell of tagging bus stops and getting caught shoplifting at Tescos.
Probably.
I don't really know, I don't pay that much attention. But it does seem that further similarities can be found in the corruption of both genres; the gritty urban reality of their origins has been consumed by a swirling vortex of bling and bitches, leaving nothing but nauseating parodies.
Still, before everything went horribly wrong Roots Manuva kicked out a couple of blinding records filled with philosophy, reflection, minimalist beats and a ruined sports day.
I like Queens of the Stone Age, but the fact is that this is the best band Josh Homme has ever had anything to do with.
Possibly the definitive stoner rock band, Kyuss sound like a dense fog of bong smoke rolling across an endless desert highway. Or like a bunch of guys from California playing scuzzy down-tuned rock. Whatever.
They sound like the sort of band that would be fronted by Blackout, the badass Decepticon that transforms into a helicopter and totally fucks up a US military base in the movie. This is not least because the double-bass drumming on their first record sounds like the blades of a Sikorsky Pave Low helicopter ploughing through a field filled with fat people.
Which is all just another way of saying that I don't know a single useful fact about this band, reducing this whole blog-farce to an exercise in stringing together words and phrases like bludgeoning, throat shredding, mammoth riffpocalypse, filthy grind bastards and ploughing through a field filled with fat people.
I've only ever listened to the first record by these guys (they released a second a few years back while I wasn't paying any attention), but it's a fucking doom drone masterpiece.
Of course, the standard reference point for all things drone is the mighty Sunn O))). Hyatari plough a less grimm furrow, a little more up tempo and tuneful - as if Sunn O))) acquired some pop sensibilities and decided to make an album full of cheery summer fun. Except that because it's Sunn O))), that still sounds like a colossal lead casket filled with tar floating through space and annihilating the stars.
One of the most enduring memories of my years of retail servitude is the tyranny of public performance licences, and the dreary tedium of having to listen to the same limited selection of mix CDs each day. Working on the basic principle that mediocre dance music is far less offensive than mediocre rock music, my part timer Jeff McDeath and I would regularly stick in the dance mix CD and spend our weekday mornings body-popping to fat beats.
One of the standout tracks on that CD was the Tom Middelton "Cosmos" remix of Mass Destruction by Faithless. It was all dense, bass-heavy electronica, and for the first time I found myself wondering if maybe Faithless were worth more of a listen.
For a long time they never quite made sense to me outside of work; until a few days ago, when my ipod spat Take The Long Way Home into my ears as I cycled to work. And then I realised the magic of Faithless lay in their ability to make mundane activities (working in a shop, cycling along the A4174, being in a nightclub) seem epically euphoric.
The first time I heard Oxbow, I didn't like them. Admittedly it wasn't the full band, just guitarist Niko Wenner and vocalist Eugene Robinson performing some kind of stripped down avant garde howlfest in support of Isis when they toured the UK some years ago; but it was still an assault on the senses that I wasn't entirely prepared for.
Fast forward a few years, and I've legitimately acquired a free copy of the very excellent We Are Going To Track Down And Kill Vintage Claytah The Beard Burning Bastard by Manatees. The whole record's great, but the stand out track is The Pulp Cut; and the main reason is the guest vocals provided by none other than Eugene Robinson of Oxbow.
And so I go back and give Oxbow another go. And I'm still not sure if I like them, but I'll be damned if I can stop listening to them.
They sound kind of like Enablers, if Pete Simonelli was a sexually aggressive black man that spent all of his free time having bad acid freakouts in post apocalypse jazz clubs.
None of these are words commonly used to describe the mighty Converge. However, they are words that might be used to describe the grotesquely pleasant afternoon of "light entertainment" that I found myself choking on last weekend. It played out like an extended two-hour version of a Halifax advert, with an interval during which cream teas were served.
Listening to Converge is commonly described (by me, mostly) as likebeingpunched in the face.
And many times during that afternoon of light entertainment I found myself wanting to listen to Converge. Repeatedly, and very hard.
Just to be clear - I am talking about a band here, not the prison experiment of the same name. I mean, it was a pretty great prison experiment that had lasting implications in the way that psychological studies were carried out; but all that belongs in another blog (this week, the greatest/most traumatising prison experiment in the world ever is...)
So, Stanford Prison Experiment - the band.
First contact was a video shown on the now long defunct Noisy Mothers, a rock/metal/alternative tv show that used to air at around 3am on a Saturday some time in the mid nineties. It was eventually axed due to poor viewing figures, the schedulers at the station apparently not being keen students of cause and effect. Anyway, I forget what the song was; but the name of the band stuck in my head. And there it stayed, jostling for position with other useless facts, until a few years later when I stumbled across their entire back catalogue (all three records of it) in a second hand record shop.
They don't sound a lot like anyone else I can think of; though that probably says more about how little punk and post-hardcore I was listening to in the mid nineties than how innovative SPE were. Although having thirty minutes of a Noam Chomsky lecture as a bonus track is a fairly unique proposition...
In any case, those three records still sound pretty fucking great to me; and I'm kind of surprised that SPE didn't achieve greater recognition at the time.
Just to be clear - I am talking about a band here, not the bridge disaster of the same name. I mean, it was a pretty great bridge disaster that had lasting implications in future designs; but all that belongs in another blog (this week, the greatest bridge disaster in the world ever is...)
So, Tacoma Narrows Bridge Disaster - the band.
When I first heard these guys in 2009, they reminded me a little of You Judas - insofar as they sounded as if they liked all the grand sweeping soundscapes of post-rock, but couldn't be bothered with all the cocking about and went straight for the big riffs. Not a bad thing.
On their second record (Exegesis, released earlier this year), they sound as though they can definitely be bothered with all the cocking about; the big riffs are still present and correct, but the songs are longer, more expansive and more ambitious. In many places they sound not entirely unlike prog metal behemoths Tool. Again, not a bad thing.
